As SCMagazine informs us, a new threat has emerged in the spam world. Apparently, it’s dressed up like a new botnet spamming male sexual enhancement pill advertisings and has already managed to surpass the infamous Storm worm botnet which had been considered so far the ‘largest single source of the world’s spam’.
The so-called Mega-D, accounts, at present, for 32 % of all spam, which means 11 percent over the Storm botnet’s “performance” of 21 percent back in September 2007.
One of the ways this spam campaign works is by greatly promoting a number of pharmaceutical products such as Herbal King, Express Herbals, and VPXL.
We can call this threat an elaborate one as it uses various means to trick users. For instance, emails are intended to make you install Mega-D, as Bradley Anstis, vice-president of products at Marshal declared.
Furthermore, potential victims are lured into opening the spam through news headlines; we are familiarized with this technique owing to the Storm worm. Marshal’s representative placed the coming out of Mega-D four months back
According to the popular security provider Bitdefender heavy advertising for the same herbal medication VPXL had been identified in its January top ten threats list released a few days ago. The same source tells us that VPXL is responsible for 75 % of all pharma spam, according to Bitdefender.
In Marshal’s view, Storm worm’s current demise (it has decreased to only two per cent of the worldwide spam) was partially caused by Microsoft’s recent security expansion.
Recent research by Marshal has led to the observation that more than 70 % of all spam being presently spread originates from just five botnets, which is a very high percentage coming from such a small faction.
The same company reports that the Pushdo botnet, better known as the Celebrity botnet which had come to quite a rate last November (comparable to Storm) currently accounts for less than 6 % of all spam.
